I really liked your incorporation of a poem that featured mythical allusions into your presentation. It was really interesting to see how you cross-applied all of the information that we learned in first trimester about allusions and mythology to the assignment that we were assigned at the end of our time in the class. I think it was a really good culmination effort, as you did a good job of explaining what the allusion in Tennyson’s work meant to the ideas presented in the poem, and to the ideas your author, Richard Matheson, focused on as he developed his arguments. It was particularly interesting how this poem services as a kind of background to the reasoning for Matheson’s viewpoints. The idea that the Greek gods are not so benevolent was supported by the fact that nearly everything they did to mortals on earth was actually vindictive or abusive in nature. The quotes you pulled from the poem to explain the curse that Aurora placed upon Tithonus show a specific example of this taking place, and thus the poem really helps you support the overall message that sometimes things that appear to be blessings at first can eventually turn out to be very disastrous harms. As you summed up at the end of the paper, in this specific instance, the “blessing” of living forever isn’t always a blessing, especially when a Greek goddess hands you that supposed blessing with a weak and frail body that you would actually try to kill yourself just to leave it.
I really liked your incorporation of a poem that featured mythical allusions into your presentation. It was really interesting to see how you cross-applied all of the information that we learned in first trimester about allusions and mythology to the assignment that we were assigned at the end of our time in the class. I think it was a really good culmination effort, as you did a good job of explaining what the allusion in Tennyson’s work meant to the ideas presented in the poem, and to the ideas your author, Richard Matheson, focused on as he developed his arguments.
ReplyDeleteIt was particularly interesting how this poem services as a kind of background to the reasoning for Matheson’s viewpoints. The idea that the Greek gods are not so benevolent was supported by the fact that nearly everything they did to mortals on earth was actually vindictive or abusive in nature. The quotes you pulled from the poem to explain the curse that Aurora placed upon Tithonus show a specific example of this taking place, and thus the poem really helps you support the overall message that sometimes things that appear to be blessings at first can eventually turn out to be very disastrous harms. As you summed up at the end of the paper, in this specific instance, the “blessing” of living forever isn’t always a blessing, especially when a Greek goddess hands you that supposed blessing with a weak and frail body that you would actually try to kill yourself just to leave it.